Front D44 Ring/Pinion and upgrades

[scbronco]

i got back into it this afternoon, and i am well pleased witht the results... I had already made myself some set-up bearings, and started the trial and error with the pinion depth. it only took about 4 tries and i had it about .005" too close to the ring which was right where i wanted it, as i learned last time that i lose about that much when i prelaod the pinion bearings. so with that done i went ahead and pressed on the new bearings and set the pinion prelaod and moved to the carrier.

this is where the learning began... i got the backlash in spec after about 6 tries, and decided that the preload on the carrier was pretty good too, so i took it back out and got ready to press on the new bearings. once i got em' pressed on, and dropped it back in the case, my backlash went from .007" to .011". one thousandth out of spec... after some advice from chuck i decided since there was no way i was getting those carrier bearings back off, i would try adding .003" under the pinoin and see if that would set things right. after doing this and getting everything back together, i got .006", on the tight side, but in spec. the best part is the pattern got way better...

i got pics of the first gear pattern, but the camera died before i could get good pics of the improved pattern. i sprayed some oil on everything to protect it while it was sitting waiting on the camera to charge, so the pattern in the improved pics has some runs in it... but you'll get the point..

first pattern




improved pattern with oil runs...




it looked way better before i spreayed that oil, there was almost 2 millimeters of yellow at the tip. the bare spot on each tooth is pretty much centered on the tooth face, maybe 1 mm towards the tip from perfectly centered...

so the lesson learned was check the pattern BEFORE pressing on new bearings. all in all, for my fist time trying this, i think it turned out pretty good. but feel free to correct me...